


Somewhere Along the Way, You Will Learn

by Meskeet



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8542474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meskeet/pseuds/Meskeet
Summary: Jesse’s learned a lot over the years, about firing a gun and killing a man and that the slate’s never, ever going to be clean. If it’s true that justice is about some grand cosmic balance, then it’s true that Jesse’s thrown things off balance more than he’s righted it.
 Jesse McCree, in ten parts.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well, another day, another McCree fic. Nobody act too astonished, now.
> 
> Thank you to Red_Tigress for putting up with my barrage of little passages from this fic, the entire process from start to finish, and for how long it's taken me to finally put an ending together.

Here’s the thing: there’s no justice in this world.

Jesse learns that quick off the bat, learns it when Deadlock hands him a gun at ten and Blackwatch gives him the bullets at seventeen. He learns it with the slow _tink tink tink_ as casings fall onto the cold cement, the way he squints in the light of high noon until everything is a blur of target and _not_ and the flare of a flashbang when things get tight and enemies get close.

He learns it again when things get a little too tight and enemies get a little too close, learns it from the way his arm snaps when he’s thrown from his perch, learns it when the agents who had barely made it this far with his baby steps and hand-holding scatter like startled colts before the enemy’s rally.

McCree just switched Peacekeeper into his other hand and fires until there’s not a bullet left, the connection between his shattered hand and brain too shaky to reload as he rolls out of sight. The bodies hit the ground, but there’s too many of them and -

Forgets all the things he’s learned when Jesse wakes up in the hospital, two bright eyes staring down at him. A child, really, one of the age where she’s old enough to want to be an adult but not tall enough for her feet to hit the ground as she sits on the chair next to his bed.

“What happened to you?” she asks, and Jesse shrugs.

“Babysitting, ma’am,” he replies, her eyes lighting up as she laughs in surprise.

“My mom does that too,” the kid states. “'cept she’s usually better at shooting them than they are at shooting her. She usually takes Jack -  his armor’s better with the bullets. Sometimes it doesn’t work, though.”

Doesn’t need to know what the kid's going to say next. It might even be the reason why she's in here. Too young to fight, too old to want to watch her mom walk off to war. 

“Well,” he pauses for a moment, the multiple breaks in his left arm gnawing at him. “Maybe next time I’ll take her with me.”

-

His arm never stops throbbing, even once Dr. Ziegler pronounces it’s healed with a pleased air he’s learned to expect from her. It’s like someone let a damn dog into the room and then invited it to just sit there and chew. He hates it, hates how sometimes his fingers quiver when he doesn’t ask for it and how sometimes his shots hit a fingertip away from where he intended. For anyone else, it would be an acceptable problem.

Jesse stays up night after night, running through Blackwatch’s ammunition budget as he blasts through simulations again and again, never quite sure when his body will fail him next and seeking for a solution.

They’re working out of Grand Mesa when he looks up and he’s the only one on the payload. Ana’s keeping her distance, the steady sight of enemies dropping by magic the only sign that he’s not completely alone. Sometimes he feels the cool splash of her biotech against his armor, the boosts keeping his hands stable and his vision keen. The rest of the team is conspicuously absent, two dead, two rookies too wet behind the ears to have the balls to stay where they should be. Gabriel and Ana are the only ones where they should be - Ana, with a view of the entire alley as McCree keeps things moving and Gabriel as a shadow flitting around, striking when the enemy’s focused on McCree.

Gabriel stops beside him, looking strained as he catches his breath. Jesse doesn’t pause to say hi, just lets Peacemaker do the talking as it takes out a man with his gun on Gabe.

“We’re almost there,” Gabriel says, and he sounds just as tired as Jesse is of pushing the payload down the street. Jesse’s not even sure what he’s risking himself for. Last time, it was a stock of explosives. Time before that, he was pretty sure some Prince of a country he’d never heard of had just wanted shiny omnic parts to display in their palace.

Fucking Blackwatch. _Come join us,_ they had said. _Help us save the world._

All he’s found is a new direction to pull his trigger.

Jesse grits his teeth, glances at Gabriel. “‘Almost high noon,” he says. There’s enough of them in view to make it effective. His reserves are running low, but if he makes it quick, it shouldn’t be a problem. “Ready for me, Ana?”

“You’re powered up,” she says, voice warm and light with confidence. “Get in there.” Her attitude is catching -  it’s always a rush, the same type of rush that slipping an ace from his sleeve or shooting a ten from Gabriel’s hand rewards him with.

Jesse hops onto the front of payload with a grin, targets lighting up in his vision.

Just a second more, all he needs is a long slow second to pass and -

_“Jesse!”_

Ana’s warning is all he gets - something impacts beside him, bright, hot, _loud_ -

He’s thrown clear of the payload, the ground coming to meet him in a wet embrace. Fog swims around him, his vision flickering in and out as he struggles to rise. Gabriel’s snarling curses, his shotguns going off in Jesse’s ears.

“We’re almost out,” Ana promises, and McCree coughs. He can feel her attempts to heal, can feel the weak stir of energy - but it’s not enough.

“I have this,” Gabriel’s voice is distorted, not just by a snarl. “Get him to Ziegler - I’ll get this the rest of the way.”

Ana, who always surprises him with her strength, begins to pull Jesse off the ground. He can’t help the low moan, feeling her flinch. Something’s wrong, his balance feels off - “Peacemaker?”

“Gabriel’s got her,” Ana soothes. “ _Khara_ \- just... “ His Arabic’s not enough to keep up with the rest of the curses she says, but he knows something’s wrong. His vision’s getting worse - colors are fading, flickers of shadows bleeding across his sight. His left arm hurts worse than ever, shattering any pretense of being able to concentrate on their surroundings.

“Just listen to me, McCree,” she says. She’s never sounded this scared, “We’re almost to Mercy, just stay awake, okay? Talk-”

She stumbles slightly, her words eaten by the shadow that’s devoured all of his vision. It’s an abyss, one where he’s only dimly aware of every shaky step she manages to make. His legs aren’t working, aren’t able to help her move them forward all and it’s so, so tempting to let this be the last time he gets shot or blown up or stabbed or kicked off a ledge for Blackwatch.

He lets go.

“Jesse? _Jesse!”_

_-_

Jesse McCree does not work for Blackwatch.

He works for Gabriel Reyes, where there was no contract because signing up meant signing in blood. Only some of that blood is his, and most of it had been spilt a long, long time ago and shouldn’t mean anything anymore, but it does. Jesse does not believe in Blackwatch, but he believes in Gabriel, which means he shoots and bleeds and misses when Gabriel asks him to.

Working for Gabriel Reyes means that when he wakes in the Grand Mesa base, Ana Amari’s sprawled in one of Dr. Ziegler’s uncomfortable chairs just as her Fareeha had the first time Jesse realized where his loyalty lay. She looks decades younger, more like her daughter than ever, and the world weary lines that the effort of keeping Reyes and Jesse alive have vanished from her face.

Working for Blackwatch means that even though a friendly is on watch beside him - he doesn’t doubt she woke a half-dozen times for every sound in the infirmary - he checks for Peacekeeper and stops breathing when she’s not in his sight.

When he moves, he pulls tight against a handcuff keeping his right arm to the bed. He tries to move his left, finds it completely immobile.

The soft chink of the metal wakes Ana, and Jesse can’t help but to smile as he finds himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. He looks for possessiveness and doesn’t find it - maybe somewhere between her well-placed bullets and his bleeding all over her he thinks she earned the right.

Temporarily, that is. A man has limits, after all.

Awareness is like a harsh desert wind - it takes the smooth features of Ana’s face and carves valleys, making her look her age and some.

“Apologies,” she says crisply, but the cool word can’t disguise the emotion behind her voice or the way her eyes soften. There’s regret there, as though she knows she’s about to strike him a blow but has no choice not to.  “Do you want Dr. Ziegler’s diagnosis?”

“I’d much prefer yours,” Jesse replies, because Dr. Ziegler’s like a desert snake - she does more good than most, but she’s not afraid to use her poison.

Turns out he may not lose his life for Blackwatch today, but he does lose an arm. His flesh and blood is now metal that aches when cold and burns when not. The prosthetic built from the tech Ziegler used on Genji, which means its decades ahead of the public sector but the fine movements won’t ever be what he requires.

Ana’s there to help him take Peacekeeper and put her back together so that he can load with his left hand and shoot with his right. He’s always been an ambidextrous shooter, but while his right hand shoots great, it doesn’t shoot perfect, which means more hours of practice. He takes to sleeping in the range more often than not, which means Gabriel’s there to lock him out after the fourth day in the row and ply him with alcohol until he passes out in his own bed.

The next day, Gabriel opens up the range and they spar until the simulations register one of them dead. Ana patches them up, they reset, and start again.

_-_

Doesn’t matter how far he goes, he always ends up back West under an open sky.

Usually it’s not a deliberate action that brings him back to the desert dust and unyielding heat, usually he’s not quite sure where he is until he looks back and he’s the only living thing in sight for miles, nothing but terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness.

He’d heard the murmurs, seen the hostile shifts and battle lines drawn. Nobody asked him to pick a side and he’s not sure he would if asked. He’s seen it before - seen it bring down the New Mexico gangs, seen how Deadlock spent more time tearing at its own throat than at its enemy. He hands in his resignation in Switzerland, pays a visit to Tracer in London, and keeps moving until he blinks and finds himself in an oblivion of weary brown only disturbed by the occasional flash of red paintbrushes.

He’s been here before, was born here and left to raise himself here. He’s been shot here and shot back, killed more men than he has fingers until he escaped into what felt like another universe. He earned his first bounty here and, when the news of his departure reaches the UN, will have earned his last.

Jesse lights his cigar, breathing in a slow cloud of vapors and smoke. Blackwatch, Overwatch, Deadlock.

He’s not sure there’s a difference. If there ever had been, there isn’t any more. All of them have fought, burned, been disavowed. He exhales, his breath catches on the smoke.

There’s a lesson somewhere in there, but he’s never cared to learn what.

_-_

New Overwatch is… different.

Ana’s gone, Gabriel’s gone. The one that do come back are shadows of what they once were, shaken by Overwatch’s fall.

Morrison’s gun is just as steady as before but he hesitates before taking the front, trailing at a distance. He’s ready to shoot but not ready to lead. Lena’s still as eager as she is young, but her enthusiasm is tempered by the years working alone. Genji is no longer the loud, angry thing he once was - he’s even-keeled, no longer brimming over with anger and recklessness, centered by his refound family.

Trusting Winston to take the lead is perhaps the most difficult thing of all. Jesse hesitates to use Winston’s shielding, never quite sure if he’s about to find himself turned into a pincushion and not able to bring himself to instantly fold under orders. D.Va is even worse - she’s young, she’s loud, she’s volatile and sure of herself until she’s not. He likes her out of the suit, but knows she’d rather lead a charge then sit behind her shield. There are other new ones to keep an eye on, too - Hanzo, who he doesn’t trust alone with Genji no matter what anyone says, the monk who’s changed Genji so thoroughly that Jesse keeps a wide distance, and Lucio, who skates in and out of trouble as easily as Jesse throws back whiskey.

Then there’s Fareeha, aged more than the years should allow. She seeks him out more often than the others and asks for nothing more than his companionship. She’s grown from the pair of big eyes by his hospital bed, and he knows Ana would be proud of her. Sometimes he even seeks her out.

Usually they sit in silence, occasionally they talk. Today, Jesse finds Fareeha sitting outside his door and he sinks beside her with a wince, his latest gunshot wound aching with a surprising intensity. She bounces a small plastic ball off the floor, the walls, Peacekeeper, the top of Jesse’s hat - whatever surface suits her at the time. Her reflexes are impressive, her hands darting out as far as the eye can follow to snatch the ball out of the air, but when she misses a catch or misjudges the trajectory she gave it, Jesse is more than willing to reach out and help.

“I’m going to die for this team,” he tells her quietly, rubbing at the newest scar. Dr. Ziegler works miracles, but she doesn’t vanish the scars. She probably could, if she put her mind to it, but Jesse’s never asked.

“They won’t ask you to,” she says as matter-of-factly as she always is and her mother always was. “Not any of them.”

He’d taken the bullet for Lena when she’d paused to catch her breath. She’s gained more flashes over the years, but hasn’t broken the barrier of the third consecutive jump. He’d been counting absently when he noticed her misjudge a leap. It had been as simple as that.

“I know,” he says. “But what else can I do?”

It’s a statement, not meant as a true question. He’s always known he’d die for Overwatch, even when he’d followed Gabriel into battle. Still, he can feel it like a axe dangling over his head. They haven’t learned to work as a team, haven’t learn that the sum needs to be more than the parts. They have all spent far too much time on their own to do anything different at this point.

“Trust them,” Fareeha says. Jesse pauses and considers that with all the solemnity anything Fareeha says requires. He doesn’t flinch as she catches the ball just before it collides with his face. “If you cannot, trust me.”

-

Ana’s alive.

Until the moment when Ana strolls through the door, rifle propped on her shoulder, it’s a nonissue. She’s just another ghost lurking around in Jesse’s head until she walks into the room and says, “I hope you have a plan.”

Fareeha embraces her. Jack gives her one of those nods that’s as close to heartfelt welcome as he ever gets. Winston doesn’t bat an eye, just jumps into an explanation of what they know and what they don’t.

Spoiler: they don’t know much at all.

Lena, at least, acts with the absolute astonishment that Jesse feels everyone else should show, as does Reinhardt and Torb. Genji doesn’t react much at all, which means he’d expected but never confirmed her survival. Hanzo, Hana - neither of them had knew her except from stories and just accepted her as another _old guard_ remnant.

When Ana glances at him, her eyes pleading, Jesse reaches up to tip his hat. He’s not sure he could smile, not even for her.

Ana’s alive, and Fareeha knew. He’s not sure where to go beyond that.

_-_

Someone’d once told him that justice is a quest to fix the balance. Sometimes he thinks about that, laughs himself sick, and knows he shouldn’t have tossed back that last whiskey, the one that tastes like shit both ways and he keeps drinking. Some things are cheap these days, but justice certainly isn’t one of them.  What grand balance they were talking about, he isn’t quite sure. Maybe it’ll come from the barrel of a gun, maybe it won’t. Gabriel Reyes once told him life’s going to be what you make of it - but Jesse looks at his grave and knows that, wish as he might, things aren’t that fucking simple.

_-_

He’s not sure if he forgives Ana or not - not sure he has any right to be hurt at all - so he avoids her until he can’t.

They’re on another one of those godforsaken missions where Jesse slips through one building after another to clear the enemy, taking no shame in point-blank shooting, when he gets a distress call from Ana.

She’s close, so it doesn’t take long for him to get on the rooftop. She’s still far enough that he isn’t close enough to intervene when a cloaked figure pulls out a shotgun and fires. Ana’s old, but not too old to move fast, and someone once told Jesse that old age and treachery went hand in hand. She hits the barrel aside even as the figure fires, treading closer to the roof’s edge. She’s still struggling with the figure when McCree’s bullets hit from behind.

The stranger falters, turns - his mask is a slate of blank metal that inclines his direction. Jesse fires again, the figure dissolving into shadows as Ana loses her footing. He scrambles for the edge as she slips and dives - his fingers barely grab hers,  but it’s enough to stop her fall, feet struggling for purchase on the slick surface.

His prosthetic pulls her up with ease, and they fall backwards onto safety. When he chances a glance, he sees the town edge is below - if she’d fallen, it would’ve been into dark, turbulent waters where she’d vanish in an instant.

“That’s one you owe me,” he tells her.

“No,” she says. “That makes us even.”

And just like that, they’re okay again.

-

Jesse’s learned a lot over the years, about firing a gun and killing a man and that the slate’s never, ever going to be clean. If it’s true that justice is about some grand cosmic balance, then it’s true that Jesse’s thrown things off balance more than he’s righted it.

Peacekeeper’s in pieces in front of him, taken carefully apart and each part of the weapon carefully dismantled and wiped clean of gunpowder.  Beside him, Fareeha throws a ball against the wall. Catching it, throwing it, bouncing it. Somewhere nearby, Lena’s laughing with Lucio, the clatter of skates sometimes leading to one crash after another.

“I’m going to die for this team,” he tells Fareeha for the second time, just like he’s told Ana, told Angela, told himself over and over again. She doesn’t pause, just keeps throwing the ball over and over like she’s going to actually manage to miss the catch some day.

“Not if I don’t beat you to it first,” she says this time, wolf-smile adding a sharp edge to her warm eyes. It’s a promise, one that she’s probably going to give her best effort to fulfill. “It is about time that you realize we’re going to be with you the entire way.”

It’s true, but this isn’t about true things. This is about things that are true whether he likes it or not.  He can lie to himself, tell himself that maybe they won’t die for him like he’d die for him because Reyes has taught him this lesson, taught him that it’s not about who has your back now but when they’ll decide to stop having it.

But then Fareeha bumps her shoulder against him, takes the cloth from his hands and the oil from the ground and picks up the barrel of Peacekeeper to wipe away the soot and the oil and all the residue of their last fights. He can lie to himself one more time, tell him that maybe Lucio’s always ready with a boost, maybe Winston always has a new mod ready for his flashbangs, how maybe Jack doesn’t these days hesitate to steady him when the ground shifts beneath his feet - tell himself he only likes these things a little, but not a lot. Maybe isn’t even about the true things, just the things - just Fareeha's smile, just his fingers curling around Peacekeeper, just the taste of gunpowder on hiss tongue.

-

This is what it means to know how to fight: the taste of the air on his tongue, the slope of shattered concrete beneath his feet, the feel of it in his blood and the hands that he doesn’t let shake and crawling down the back of his neck. There’s a lot of things said about Jesse McCree, but he knows where - _what_ \- he belongs to.

Overwatch might not want him all much, but the crackle of static in the comms, the bite of copper in his mouth and on his lips and the way Reinhardt laughs as his hammer leaves a new hole in the road, it takes him every time.


End file.
